Educational Alternatives, Volume 21, 2023

Abstract: The objective of the study is to outline the general situation in society and the provision of healthcare in Czechoslovakia after 1918. After the establishment of the new republic, there were several problems that needed to be solved and they included the education of medical personnel. The contribution thus focuses on the process of the foundation of nursing schools, their existence and the problems they faced. With the exception of the social-nursing school in Martin, they were church schools run by religious orders. They were the nursing school of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross in Bratislava and three schools founded and run by the Company of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, located in Košice, Nitra and Trenčín. In the 1920s, the state was responsible for the foundation of a social- healthcare school in Slovakia, in Turčiansky Sv. Martin. The first, properly organised nursing school was founded in Slovakia by the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross. It opened as early as 1931 and the first course was to start for the 1931/1932 school year. The second church order which dedicated its efforts to the training of nurses was the Company of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. They established a nursing school in Košice in 1932. Unfortunately, only three years later, in 1938, it was dissolved when, as a result of the Vienna Award, the southern regions of Slovakia were annexed by Hungary. Following the war, the order managed to establish two nursing schools, the school in Nitra, went into operation on 1st October 1946 and the other, in Trenčín, on 1st September 1947. In 1950 the repressive Communist Government terminated the activities of the schools through Operation “N” – Nuns, run by the State Security Service.